31 Mar 2012 - 9:25pm
ENSCHEDE: With a deadly dose of barbiturates stashed in his home in a small eastern Dutch town, pensioner Hans Hillebrand is a self-determinist: he alone wants to decide when it's time to die with dignity.
"I want to do it myself, to be responsible for it myself," the former business manager, 78, told AFP he was still perky and alert, loved...
30 Mar 2012 - 3:14pm
CANNES: Beamed onto iPads and smartphones, with new channels going live daily and 3D TV hoping for an Olympic boost, television is morphing into a radically new beast, experts said ahead of a top industry show. "We're in a time of massive transformation for the entire industry," Laurine Garaude, head of the TV division at Reed MIDEM, which is...
29 Mar 2012 - 2:11pm
WASHINGTON: Half of all cancers could be prevented if people just adopted healthier behaviours, US scientists argued on Wednesday.
Smoking is blamed for a third of all US cancer cases and being overweight leads to another 20 per cent of the deadly burden that costs the United States some $226 billion per year in health care expenses and...
28 Mar 2012 - 3:52pm
MADRID: Hoisted from trucks and trolleys, the brown boxes keep coming, packing the warehouses with acres of jewellery, jeans and shoes. There is little sign of Spain's economic crisis in Cobo Calleja, a vast industrial estate where the traders chatter in Chinese.
Like many European cities, this city has for years been home to a Chinese...
27 Mar 2012 - 2:00pm
NEW YORK: Jet plane, tick. Private island, tick. Chopper, tick. Submarine?
When director James Cameron descended to the bottom of the Pacific on Monday, he not only shed light on the world's deepest ocean, but the world's most exclusive hobby: private submarine voyages.
The phenomenally profitable director of "Avatar" piloted an...
27 Mar 2012 - 1:39pm
MUZAFFARABAD: From mosques, to homes and streets, Pakistanis are increasingly seeing the light and realising that year-round sun may be a cheap if partial answer to an enormous energy crisis. "It's the best thing I bought this winter," says Sardar Azam, a former civil servant retired to a river-side home in Pakistani-administered Kashmir,...
27 Mar 2012 - 1:24pm
NEW YORK: Malaysia has been listed as one of the 18 best places for Americans to retire overseas, based on the criteria of affordability and quality of life, for senior citizens. The list of 18 countries was compiled by Kathleen Peddicord, the founder of the Live and Invest Overseas publishing group. Peddicord, who has been covering the subject...
26 Mar 2012 - 2:36pm
CHICAGO: Eating raisins and soy appears to help ward off high blood pressure, a key risk factor in heart disease, according to two studies presented at a major US cardiology conference on Sunday.
Munching on a handful of raisins three times a day helped people with slightly elevated blood pressure lower their numbers after several weeks...
23 Mar 2012 - 5:13pm
SYDNEY: Rolling from his surfboard, blood gushing from the wound where a shark had just ripped a big chunk of flesh from his thigh, Australian Glen Folkard had just one thought: "I'm alive."
Folkard, 44, was out beyond the breakers at Redhead Beach, north of Sydney, when a three-metre bull shark lunged for his board, knocking him to the...
22 Mar 2012 - 4:37pm
ISLAMABAD: At least 943 Pakistani women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family's honour, the country's leading human rights group said Thursday.
The statistics highlight the growing scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan, where they are frequently treated as second-class...
